There are many services that provide alerts to pilots warning them of potential threats, whether it is related to weather, Air Traffic Control (ATC) restrictions or navigational (GPS) impairments. The traditional solution may be typically an attempt at an alternate path to bypass these threats.
Many air carriers provide each flight crew with an alternate path of flight to mitigate an enroute (e.g., weather related) threat. These standard weather avoidance procedures (SWAP) routes may enable an aircrew to make accurate decisions based on a current fuel load and preplanned alternate routing from a departure airport to a destination. These traditional weather providers may retrieve weather alerts for specifically provided routes. However, their logic is limited to monitoring a provided route and is limited to specific times.
Further, additional threats may impact the timeliness and fuel burn of a specific flight. For example, an outage or a reduction in accuracy of a particular navigational aid including a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) may impact an ability of a flight or aircraft to successfully navigate a particular route.
Further, a mechanical anomaly or Minimum Equipment List (MEL) item onboard the aircraft reducing an accuracy of navigational equipment may impact an ability of the aircraft to successfully maintain an accuracy required within a particular airspace. For example, a Required Navigation Performance (RNP) accuracy requirement of RNP4 may be required to enter a specific oceanic track. Should an aircraft be unable to maintain the designated accuracy requirement, the flight may be forced to divert or hold until minimum separation may be manually assured.
In addition, route changes are dependent on ATC, which during a large weather event may cause crowded airspace and may limit the availability of the requested route. For flights traversing through multiple countries, altering the route to avoid a threat may increase the cost of the flight by crossing additional countries, or may be inhibited because the correct permits were not obtained, or the country may be unsafe and/or illegal to cross.
Coupled with perishable SWAP route decisions and limited decisions made by ATC, the traditional weather alerts may lead decision makers to select an alternate route for the flight which may not be the most efficient route in terms of time and fuel. Since alternate routes typically have the negative impact in time, fuel costs and additional wear on the aircraft, a need remains for selecting an alternate path for the flight which may use a time and altitude window to continuously and automatically propose an alternative path.